Are we broken or just bent?
by BreatheSemperMea
Summary: My thoughts about what happens after 9x24, after the storm. How can they face the storm and everything afterwards? It can be dark, it can get sad. Maybe they end up together, maybe they don't. I don't even know yet.


Arizona had never thought that she'd be thrown into the same situation again. Why leave the one you love behind when she's everything you want? And she knew what she was talking about because she'd been there two times, sitting where they were sitting now. It was the same couch they'd been sitting on when she'd told Callie that she'd just got her things together and that they would see each other at work. Because that had worked so well... Both had been miserable. Beyond miserable, even. Stolen glances, the longing in their eyes so evident that everybody had been able to see it. And that's why they ended up back together again. Because they loved each other.

It was also the same couch she had told Callie that this was not her dream when she came home from Africa after only months instead of three years, only to find that the woman she'd missed so much was pregnant with her best friend's baby. Yet, she stayed. Because she loved this woman.

And it was the very same couch she told her love, her family that as long as they were together, they could handle everything. Every rock thrown their way, every river without a bridge, every storm could be weathered. But she had been wrong with the last metaphor. Because it was a storm that was about to rip her family apart. A storm so strong that she had lost her control.

"Callie, please..." She had started crying what felt like hours ago, but the Latina was sitting next to her in complete silence, just staring at the floor after she'd put Arizona's bag next to the door and sat down on the couch. "Please." Her voice was shaking and tear-choked. What had she done? She let her face fall into her hands, tears dripping relentlessly into her palms. She didn't know the person she had become. She used to be strong and honourable. But only hours ago, she'd thrown her life over the edge by letting a woman that was not her wife touch her. "Calliope..." The name again died in her throat. How could she let herself be blinded by some flirting? Of course, she had been flattered, who wouldn't? This woman had known about her, about the crash, about the missing leg and still she had flirted with her and told her that she was beautiful. But so had Callie. Over and over again. And in the beginning, she had fought her wife, her words, her acts. How could her wife still think that she was beautiful when she was missing a leg? She didn't see it, because she didn't remember that she was in a similar situation. After the car crash, when Callie was reserved towards her because of her scars. In her eyes, Callie was still as beautiful as she was the day she noticed Dr. Torres walking down the halls of Seattle Grace, then Seattle Grace Mercy West and now Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The brunette had always been the most beautiful thing in her life, well, next to her daughter, that is.

"Callie, please... say something. Don't let it end here."

But the Latina still sat in silence. Her brother told her a few weeks before he left for Iraq the last time, that an angry woman is frightening and scary. She can yell and make you feel really scared and hurt you with her words. But you would always prefer an angry woman over a silent woman. Because a silent woman meant that you broke the woman. And that's what she had done. She broke Callie. Again. "We can survive this. We just", she wiped her tears away. "We just need another chance, Calliope. I love you. I'm not ready to say goodbye." Despite anything she'd said earlier in the on-call room, she loved her wife, her daughter. More than anything. More than anyone. "We can-"

"We can't."

It were the first words coming out of the Latina's mouth since their fight at the hospital. The fight where she had blamed Callie for losing her leg, for not fighting hard enough. Where she told Callie that she should even the score to make her feel everything she was feeling. The fight, where it all came crumbling down.

"I wasn't in the woods", the brunette said, not looking up. "I wasn't there."

"You weren't", Arizona agreed, knowing that she had been way out of line for blaming her wife for not being there with her and pretending like she'd been.

"I wish I was there. I wish I would have been there too. I wish I had been there instead of you. Or instead of Mark. Instead of Lexie. I wish none of you would have been on that plane but me so everyone would be alive and happy."

She stopped breathing, looking over to her wife in shock. She couldn't be serious. "Stop saying things like this, Calliope. That is not true. What about me, what about Sofia?"

With her eyes still glued to the floor, she sighed. Sofia, she kept her going even when Arizona had treated her like crap and hated her after she'd made the call to cut off her leg. And then they were getting better and better and shared a bed, made love, had sex. They had been back and now they were broken.

"Please", she said again. "Give me the chance. One chance to get better so we can get better and back to who we were. Don't-"

"Don't you see it?"

"What?"

"There is no chance left for us. We had our second chance after we broke up over babies and it took a maniac to get us back together. You had your second chance when you left me for Africa and came back for me and I had my second chance when I pushed you into a life with a baby you were not ready to have with a father in the picture you never wanted. We're out of second chances." She stayed calm. There was no energy left to fight for a marriage that was no longer there. Her feelings were still the same, even with what Arizona had done. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge and accept the end of something.

"No!", she yelled. "No no no no no. We can. I know that we can. I love you. I am nowhere near ready to say goodbye and I won't." The tears started all over again. "I will not walk away from you again."

"You just did", Callie said just as calm as she'd said everything else and it scared Arizona.

"NO! No." She bit her lips, trying to calm herself down. "I did not walk away. I- I don't know what it was. We-"

"There is no we left, Arizona." And just like that, just like the past years and everything else they had been through had never happened, she stood up and walked into the bedroom, locking the door from the inside and leaving Arizona behind. She sank down with her back against the door and started crying. She was not ready to say goodbye either, but it seemed so inevitable, so ultimate. They still hadn't learned to talk and that was what broke them in the end. She didn't know how they were supposed to bounce back from this state of broken trust. And maybe that was just it. Maybe it was all coming down to this and all she had left in her was needed to keep her head high and walk tall. For Sofia. For Mark. For herself.

* * *

AN: Really, I had to get it out of my mind and I have no idea right now which way to go with it. Give me your thoughts?


End file.
